Bill Laswell — Filmtracks 2000

The everflowing stream of Laswell releases brings us a collection of music used in and made for films. All the usual ingredients are present on 'Filmtracks 2000'.

From India to Turkey via Africa through London to New York creating something like Oriental ambient drum 'n' bass with jazz in a dub-mix. Laswell recombinant and eclectic style might be familiar to people who've been listening to his music for the last 10 years but on this release everything worked out a little bit better than on other releases. Not that the other stuff isn't good but for me personally this one stands out as one of his better releases since the amazing Hallucination Engine record made under the Material-banner made some 10 years ago.

Accompanied by assorted musicians from all over the world he paints pictures of Africa, the Orient and India. All in a fairly relaxed manner, you can lay back and enjoy the different atmospheres and dream about different cultures and places. Longtime collaborators like Jonas Hellborg, Bernie Worrell, Ginger Baker and Nicky Skopelitis and more recent friends like Graham Haynes and Omar Faruk Tekbilek can all shine without getting tempted into self-indulgent displays of technique.

Beautiful melodic pieces like the romantic orchestral jazzpiece Siren Song are alternated by Into The Void: a more spheric ambient track. The lovely ney/kanun duet O Haji Baig, the percussive dub of Comoro 1 & 2, the Indian drum 'n' bass of Deadly Haven and the African groove of Soldiers Of Misfortune, it seems a compendium of everything Laswell has been doing the last 15 years in the field of world-music.

As said: this is one of the best Laswell-releases I know and the only negative thing I can come up with is that there is no list of films in which this music is used. I'm curious to see some those films some day.